Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

Pauline shook her head. This week would be a challenge—but an amusing one, at least. The duchess did possess a sense of humor. However, the older woman underestimated Pauline, if she thought she could cow her.

Oh, she knew the Halford pride was strong. In the carriage, she’d listened to the family provenance. At length. No doubt a duchess born to generations of wealth, married into an even longer line of nobility, would believe herself to be indomitable. But Pauline had earned her stubbornness, fighting hard for it at every turn. On the other side of this week lay the prospect of a new, independent life. She wouldn’t be swayed from that goal. Not even by a duchess.

Come hell or high society, she would earn that one thousand pounds.

Eventually they all settled down to the business of eating. The servants removed the savory dishes from the table and replaced them with a variety of fruits and cheeses. Grapes, plums, nectarines. Pauline spied a dish of sherry trifle that had her mouth watering—layers of raspberries, sponge, whipped cream, all visible through the glass dish.

And then, to this overwhelming abundance of sweets, the footman set before her one more: a molded sculpture of blancmange.

The breath left her body, leaving only a keen, sharp ache.

Oh, Danny.

The wave of homesickness swamped her with such violent force, she couldn’t bear it. Not a moment longer. She pushed back from the table and fled the room, dashing into the stairwell.

This was a mistake. She had to leave. She had to go home. How many miles had they traveled? Fifteen? Twenty? She had a full belly, and the weather was fine. If she started now, she could walk home by dawn.

“Simms?” The duke’s voice echoed down the narrow stairwell, arresting her on the landing. “Are you ill?”

“No,” she said, hastily dabbing at her eyes before she turned to him. “No, I’m well. I’m sorry for leaving the table so abruptly.”

Slow footfalls carried him down the stairs. “Don’t be. It was the cap on a sterling display of poor etiquette. Well done, you. But my mother was concerned for your health.”

“I’m fine, truly. It was just the blancmange.”

“The blancmange?” He frowned. “I find it revolting myself, but the stuff almost never drives me to tears.”

She shook her head. “It’s my sister’s favorite. I’ve been missing her all day, of course. But when that blancmange appeared before me, it all just . . .”

“Hit you,” he finished for her, coming to join her on the landing. “All at once. Like a landslide.”

She nodded. “Exactly so. For a moment, it was like the air went to mud. I couldn’t even—”

“Breathe,” he said. “I know the sensation.”

“Do you?”

Perhaps he did, she thought, surveying the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, and the weariness that pooled like shadows beneath. She could believe he was intimately acquainted with this lonely, desolate feeling—perhaps even more so than she.

“Give a moment,” he said. “It will pass.”

The stairwell was suddenly very warm, and very small. The walls seemed to push them closer together. She was aware of his looming size, his male heat. His powerful good looks. And that rich, lingering hint of his musky cologne.

“Perhaps we should go back,” she said.

“Wait. You have something”—he touched a fingertip to the corner of his own mouth—“just here. A stray bit of sugar, I think.”

She cringed. How embarrassing.

She extended her tongue and ran it slowly from one corner of her mouth to the other, then back again. “Better?”

He blinked. “No.”

She raised her hand to dab at her cheek.

“Stop. Just let me.” He reached one hand forward, bracing the side of his palm against her cheek and brushing the corner of her mouth with his thumb.

Mercy. She was the farthest from home she’d ever been in her life, adrift in a vast, lonely sea of emotion. And his touch against her bare skin, so warm and assured . . . It was like someone throwing her a rope.

A connection.

He skimmed a light touch under her bottom lip. “You,” he said softly, “have quite the mouth on you.”

“So I’ve been told. It’s my worst fault, I think.”

“I’m not sure I’d agree.”

She forced a cheerful tone. “I do have many faults to choose from. Impertinence, stubbornness, pride. I curse too much, and I’m terribly clumsy.”

“Well.” His touch stilled, and he tilted her face to his. “This week, all those faults make you perfect.”

He would go and say something wonderful.

She tried to smile. It didn’t quite work. Her emotions were chaotic, swinging back and forth between caution and thrill, and a mad voice inside her kept foolishly insisting that she needed to keep her lips very, very still . . .

Because this man was about to kiss them.

Pauline had been kissed a time or two. She knew how a man’s face changed as he was preparing to do it. The small lines around his mouth disappeared, and his head made a subtle tip to one side. His eyelids grew heavy, lowering just enough to reveal a dark fringe of lashes.

His gaze focused intently on her mouth.